1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a system and method for medical image processing. Specifically, the present invention relates to a method and system for computer assisted medical diagnosis and systems incorporating the present invention.
2. Description of Related Art
The process of diagnosing a lesion/cancer is complex and often requires consideration of different types of diagnostic information extracted from different sources such as diagnostic images. Such diagnostic images may be acquired in different modalities such as Ultrasound (US), Computerized Tomography (CT), or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Each image modality may offer different insight regarding a disease and provide distinct medical evidence that can be used to reach a diagnosis. Even with such information afforded by modern technologies, diagnosis of lesion/cancer in some organs such as liver lesion/cancer has still proven to be a significant challenge. One important reason relates to the fact that the same disease may appear visually different in diagnostic images of different modalities and different diseases may appear to be similar across images of different modalities. As a consequence, non-cancer liver diseases are sometimes confused with liver cancer diseases and vice versa. For example, non-cancer liver diseases such as Hemangioma, Heptatocellular Adenoma, and Focal Nodular Hyperplasia (FNH) may sometimes appear to be liver cancer.
Given those difficulties in processing data from various modalities, reaching a medical diagnosis based on such data often requires substantial clinical experience. The accuracy of the diagnosis and the amount of time spent to reach a correct diagnosis may also vary considerably from radiologist to radiologist. Tools are needed to facilitate automatic detection of lesion/cancer and extraction of useful diagnostic information to improve throughput and efficiency of a process for diagnosing lesion/cancer.